Pirate Party

The entire Piratepad service provided by the German Pirate Party has been shut down after a Berlin based newspaper, Tagesspiegel, received a "dubious e mail" saying that one of the public pads contained links to child pornography. Once the Pirate Party was notified, it immediately shut down the pad in question and reported the case to the police. Berlin State Police subsequently recommended to suspend the entire service to prevent further abuse; the party followed this advice and shut down the Piratepad server, including pads used by its own working groups.

According to § 184b StGB, it is illegal to possess child pornography, and to make it accessible. It is not uncommon for internet users to report such cases to the police in Germany, as any failure to do so could be interpreted as complicity.

The Piratepad service made headlines earlier this year, when the Offenbach based server was confiscated by Darmstadt prosecutors shortly before state elections in Bremen. The raid was motivated by allegations that instructions for a denial of service attack appeared on one of the pads. The Pirate Party filed a complaint about the way the case was handled. Darmstadt District Court would later acknowledge procedural errors.

A few months later, the Pirate Party won 8.9% at Berlin state elections.

Today, servers of the Pirate Party Germany were confiscated. According to news reports, Darmstadt prosecutors confirm that there is currently no legal action against the Pirate Party itself. The target of the raid is information stored on these servers. The raid was carried out on request of French authorities who are investigating an alleged Anonymous attack on Électricité de France SA.

The Pirate Party released a statement saying that they fully cooperate in the investigation. A spokesperson confirmed to Der Spiegel that Piratenpad, the presumed target of the raid, does not log the IP addresses of its users. According to another statement on the official website of the party, the investigation centers around a SSH key which allegedly appeared on Piratenpad.

The servers were operated by the Offenbach based company AixIT. The raid was carried out on a Friday, two days before state elections in Bremen.

Spiegel Online and German public broadcaster ZDF report that the website of German Federal Police suffered performance problems for some time on Friday afternoon, which were consistent with a DDoS attack. The Pirate Party stated that they do not support such attacks.

Read more on Frankfurter Rundschau:

http://www.fr-online.de/home/polizei-schaltet-piratenpartei-kurz-vor-bre...

Statements by the Pirate Party:

http://vorstand.piratenpartei.de/2011/05/20/polizei-beschlagnahmt-server...

http://www.piratenpartei.de/Pressemitteilung/server-durchsuchung-wegen-f...

More on Spiegel Online and the ZDF news:

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,763939,00.html

http://www.heute.de/ZDFheute/inhalt/18/0,3672,8240242,00.html

[Update]

On 27th of January 2011 at 15:00, the Pirate Party UK issued a press release in regards to the recent five arrests of Anonymous members. Amongst other points made in the Press releasethis underlining point was made:

While the Party will never condone any illegal actions, it can understand the frustration felt by many who feel powerless in the face of multinational corporations and Governments unwilling to step in.

That normal, everyday people choose to take these sorts of actions shows the extent to which many people feel disenfranchised by mainstream politics and the Pirate Party aims to give such people a voice and a means to engage in these issues through lawful and political methods rather than resorting to 'hacktivism' and other actions that could be illegal.

Further, the Piratenpartei has filed a petition with the Deutscher Bundestag which, in part states:
Protection of whistle blowers. (Translated in Part)